


You Are My Sunshine (My Only Sunshine)

by elkleggs, profoundalpacakitten



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blanket Winter Soldier Warning, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Embedded Audio, Embedded Images, Frottage, I love it when Bucky calls Steve sunshine, Jealousy, Love Confessions, M/M, Memory Issues, Outdoor Sex, Singing, So I took that and ran with it, Sweet Jesus what did I write?, Whistling, You Are My Sunshine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:35:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28884003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elkleggs/pseuds/elkleggs, https://archiveofourown.org/users/profoundalpacakitten/pseuds/profoundalpacakitten
Summary: The year is 1941, summer’s passed and the song is everywhere.The year is 1941 and Steve Rogers is both distraught and in love.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 35
Kudos: 164





	You Are My Sunshine (My Only Sunshine)

**Author's Note:**

> Someone should take away my keyboard.
> 
> As always, the most grateful thanks to [Bananas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hark_Bananas) the best beta to ever beta.
> 
> So much love to [Weaponized](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weaponized) who whistled in my stead because I'm a fucking shit whistler and hence made the best SFX of the Winter Soldier whistling while on a mission.
> 
> And final but biggest thanks to [elkane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elkane) who I collab'd with for the art embedded in the fic. Their art is insanely good, and I will gush forever about it, do go check out their art on their [twitter](https://twitter.com/elkane16) and [Tumblr](https://elkane.tumblr.com/). I'm still a bit floored with how easily and well we vibed on this: the base material, the mood, the scene, and then the excahnge of the art file, doing the backgrounds and colours to try to showcase to the best of my abilities their fucking gorgeous lineart and poses and... UGH... Just... Feast your eyes on the gorgeousness.
> 
> And now. Fic.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine  
You make me happy when skies are gray  
You'll never know dear, how much I love you  
Please don't take my sunshine away

The other night dear, as I lay sleeping  
I dreamed I held you in my arms  
And when I awoke, dear, I was mistaken  
And I hung my head and cried.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine  
You make me happy when skies are gray  
You'll never know dear, how much I love you  
Please don't take my sunshine away

I'll always love you and make you happy,  
If you will only say the same.  
But if you leave me to love another,  
You'll regret it all some day.

| 

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine  
You make me happy when skies are gray  
You'll never know dear, how much I love you  
Please don't take my sunshine away

You told me once, dear, th’ you really loved me  
And no one else could come between.  
But not you've left me and love another;  
You have shattered all of my dreams.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine  
You make me happy when skies are gray  
You'll never know dear, how much I love you  
Please don't take my sunshine away  
  
---|---  
  
— Gene Autry, 1941, “You are my sunshine”

↜❂↝

The song comes out in 1940; its success, immediate, spreads quickly to the whole country. It gets performed several times in New York, even. However, the song really hits full steam on the charts when the summer of 1941 rolls around and Gene Autry and then Bing Crosby record it.

For some time, it becomes an unavoidable staple of Steve’s day. It’s on the radio, it’s in the jazz parlour down the street. It’s Autry and Crosby and King’s voices crackling when he passes the neighbours’ flat on the ground floor, crooning the song everywhere he goes. For months on end, those lyrics are on Bucky’s lips as he prepares for his day at the office, a jaunty hum, a gay whistle while he knots his tie or shaves in their tiny bathroom.

The year is 1941, summer’s passed and the song is everywhere.

The year is 1941 and Steve Rogers is both distraught and in love.

To be frank, Steve has been in love with his best friend for ever. As for the quandary that’s causing him distress, it’s one of his own making. He and Bucky had gotten drunk two weeks previously because Steve hit it big on a painting job. They’d hit every dance hall both on the way out and on the way back, Bucky had danced and sung his heart out, and Steve had been buoyed by his friend’s mood, going as far as trying for a dance or two — with disastrous results, mind you.

When they’d got back home, they were laughing uproariously about something or other. The details weren’t really clear, and didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

What mattered was that Bucky had kissed Steve right on the lips, in their living room, high on their revelries and Steve… Steve had been too stunned to react. He’d stood straight and frozen like the numpty he was — and still is, actually. Feeling no reaction at all, Bucky had lurched back after a second and then stumbled to his room, mumbling something incomprehensible. The night had passed and nothing had come out of it. Nothing. Bucky had been hungover the next day, and Steve hadn’t whispered a word of what had happened.

Steve thinks Bucky doesn’t remember anything from that night, that’s the only reason he wouldn’t… say anything. Or maybe he regrets everything. As for Steve, he’s been beating himself up over his cowardice and his inability to bring up that drunken kiss. It’s why this sunny autumn of 1941 finds them both tiptoeing around each other, each unsure of the other for maybe the first time in their lives.

It’s 1941, war growls overseas, and all the men his age have been drafted over the last few years, except for Bucky, thanks to his job. They live together, share the same space and the same air, but there is this strange tension between Steve and the best friend he’s ever had, and all he hears every-fucking-where he goes is this sad song that sounds so happy, but… 

It isn’t.

It’s about heartbreak and unrequited love, and he hates it, he hates its ubiquitousness. He hates the fight he can’t join, he hates the chasm that has opened between him and Bucky. Steve hates a lot of things with passion.

Steve has no patience for that song and no patience for Bucky’s avoidance of him, for his own failure to reciprocate. He’s beating himself up and doesn’t know how to talk to Bucky about this, but Bucky seems to want to ignore the problem completely, staying up late, putting in overtime at work, and filling the silences with singing and humming, which doesn’t leave Steve any space to chime in and ask about that night, two weeks ago.

“I'll always lo-ve you— and make you hap-py—…” Bucky sings as he cracks two eggs into the pan.

“Buck.” Steve sighs from his place at the kitchen table, where he’d been tranquilly sipping his coffee until Bucky started whistling while making breakfast.

“If you will on-ly— say the same…”

“Bucky!”

Bucky jerks in surprise and looks at Steve over his shoulder. “What’s going on?”

“Could you stop singing that fucking song for just a single second?” He knows he is being waspish, but he can’t listen to one more verse of it.

“Steve?” Bucky is, justifiably, floored. Something must show on Steve’s face, some hint of his sour and testy mood, because he cuts off the fire on the oven and walks to the open doorway between the kitchen and the living room. “Are… What is it?”

“I just.” Steve clenches his fists under the table. He’s so angry, but also he feels so cornered, unable to make a clever decision. “I just hate that song.”

Bucky clearly seems taken aback by his initial reaction. “O-kay, then, I can sing something else, pal, you just say what—”

“No.” And now Steve doesn’t even want to look at Bucky, the anger soon turning to embarrassment at his flight of temper. Bucky loves singing.

He hears Bucky walk up to the table and sit beside him. “No?” he asks, softly.

“I don’t want you to sing anymore.” Bucky’s always sung, and here is Steve asking him to cut it out.

Everything is quiet for a while; Steve finally decides to peek up at Bucky and it hits him in the chest like a punch, how sad Bucky looks, fidgeting in his chair. He looks…

“Bucky?”

“I can’t do that, Steve,” Bucky whispers, and then looks him directly in the eyes. “I can’t not sing my heart out.”

Anger now but a memory, Steve bites his lip, and he sees Bucky’s eyes shift briefly to his mouth. Steve maybe doesn’t know how to broach the subject of The Night, but here they are. Here he is, and he’s getting his courage back. He didn’t miss that covert look. Steve is a fool, but not an idiot.

“Why the sad song, Bucky? Why is it always love songs with broken hearts?”

Bucky blinks and looks at his knees. “Just seems fitting, is all.”

 _That’s called an opening_. “Got your heart broken recently?” Steve asks, putting his hand on Bucky's shoulder and trailing it up to his neck when Bucky jerks in surprise. He shivers as Steve crawls his hand up his neck, gently caressing Bucky’s skin with the tips of his fingers.

“I— Steve?”

“I’m sorry for the other night,” Steve murmurs. “Sorry I didn’t get my wits together,” and then he leans forward until their mouths collide. One of them gasps. Steve hears Bucky mumble his name, feels Bucky’s lips move against his, and for a long while, all they share is space and heat and breaths, maybe some sorrys, and a lot of promises.

↜❂↝

Later that afternoon, Steve wakes up slowly from his nap to soft words hummed in his good ear, the bad one smushed against the pillow. He’s warm, hot, even under the covers with Bucky’s chest glued to his back with sweat and Bucky’s arms tight around his damp skin, stroking the skin of his belly lightly. Steve sighs, basking in the glow of late summer and the sounds of his new lover.

He can feel the rumble of Bucky’s voice, singing in an undertone, “You are my sun-shi-ine, my only sun-shine…” Steve groans and turns around in Bucky’s arms, refusing to slip out of the hug in spite of the summer warmth. “You make me ha-ppy— when ski— es are gra—ay…”

“Hmmm… not that fucking song, Bucky.”

“Shhh, sunshine.” Bucky shushes him and kisses the crown of his head before jumping several verses further in the song. “I told you once, dea—r, I loved you dear-ly—…” Steve frowns “And no one else dea—r, could come betwe—en. An’now you've told me— we’re fore—ever—;”

“That’s…” _Those aren’t the right lyrics,_ Steve thinks. _What—?_

Bucky kisses his brow again and sings the last of his words against Steve’s skin. “You have me—nded a—ll my drea—ms.”

“Bucky… you changed the lyrics?”

Bucky smiles at Steve like he’d hung the Sun and the Moon and the stars. “Can't sing a sad song anymore, can I?”

* * *

When Bucky goes off to war, the first thing Steve misses is the noise Bucky made. His steps, his words, his whistling, his singing. By that point, _You are my sunshine_ is still popular, but it’s no longer on the charts. It’s now faded, another hit taking its place, and he doesn’t hear it as often on the radio. He misses Bucky. He wishes he could do more, fight the good fight. His anger has no real outlet aside from directing it at himself.

Steve thinks that the war took his sunshine away; how else can he explain the dreary days before Bucky comes back from Basic, the sunny skies when Bucky smiles right before he ships out. They’ve had a year. They’ve had a year together, closer than ever, and now Bucky isn’t here. Steve doesn’t want to live without his sunshine, but he does, for half a year before he sees Bucky one last time.

So of course he says yes when Dr Erskine gently says he has a way for him to enroll. Of course he's gonna do his part. There are bullies to put in their places and a war to fight and stop and win, hopefully, so that he can hear their song again.

↜❂↝

However, when he finally rescues Bucky, and after the dust settles, Steve notices that Bucky has changed. Of course he’s changed, there’s a war going on, he was a prisoner. It’s been nearly six months since they saw each other last.

But Bucky’s different — he smiles less, and when he does, his cocky grin is tinged with an edge. Sharp, jagged, feral even. He was beautiful before, and now he's beautiful and dangerous.

Steve can't quite catch a break for a while and has a hard time getting some moments to himself. It’s understandable, though, as he indeed got a civilian to airdrop him over enemy territory, which could have endangered a whole lot more than just his pair of enhanced biceps.

He lets Phillips get it all out of his system, and for several days, has to make do with exchanging glances with Bucky across fields and officer’s tents and briefings. He's waiting for a break, a moment alone, a moment far from people trying to climb all up in his business. Just one fucking minute so that he can talk to Bucky, maybe listen to his voice.

It takes a lot more time than he'd expected; even in the pub, Bucky stayed aloof, joking around, maybe slightly drunk. Mindful of the public, surely.

This is the first mission where Steve and his little ragtag gang of misfits have been sent to recon and hopefully sabotage of a supply line far into the lower Italian Alps. It's cold and misty in November, 1943. They’ve spent the last few hours settling down in a clearing, setting up tents, checking that nobody is around their campsite.

When Steve comes back to their camp, everything has been set up and a fire is lit. He's been running miles and miles in circles around the camp, further and further away, just to be sure they wouldn't be seen and to burn off some of his nervous energy. His squad is laughing, joking around, sharing a flask of whatever hooch Bucky got his hands on last. He has that uncanny ability to procure just about anything. A boon on the front.

Someone says, “Sarge, come on give us a song!” Must be Dum Dum.

Steve looks up sharply. He's heard Bucky hum absentmindedly as they hiked in the wilderness, but nothing more. This had been one of the sharpest differences between his old Bucky and the new one.

Bucky laughs it off, cigarette hanging from his mouth as he languidly sprawls on his log. “Can't Dum Dum, smoking makes my voice raspy,” he says and takes a deep lungful before blowing it upwards in a billowing cloud of smoke and condensation.

“Oh, come on,” Gabe scoffs, “you’ll bellow sea shanties in a cell to piss off Krauts with no water all day, but a little smoke is making your voice too raspy?”

This doesn't seem to move Bucky much; he smirks and lets the smoke from his cigarette drift up for some seconds before taking it from his lips and clearing his throat.

“You are my sun-shi—ne, my only sun-shine…” Bucky starts and Steve nearly gasps out loud because…

As the rest of his squad look on and roll their eyes at the dramatics, Bucky goes on singing the next verse, in minor key, haunting and dark, eerie in the silent forest enshrouded in the encroaching darkness of dusk.

How dare Buck sing their song in minor key?

“— in my a—rms, when I awoke, dea—r, I was mista-ken… And I hung— my head, and cri-ed…”

How dare Bucky stare into his very eyes and not change the lyrics, how dare he?

Steve’s eyes bore into Bucky’s cocky stare, dark like the night in the low light, none of the usual clear grey and changing blue. He tries to telegraph the full breadth of his anger at Bucky, because this is their song, goddamnit, for all that the whole United States must have sung it once or twice or a million times, it’s _theirs_.

Bucky looks away first after he finishes singing the chorus a second time, and after the guys heckle him for being a creepy son of a gun, he laughs joyfully and starts on _Bei mir bist du shein_ , snapping his fingers to mark the rhythm until Morita and Dum Dum start using their canteens as improvised drums. Soon the bizarre atmosphere thrown by _You are my sunshine_ sung in a minor key is dispelled.

↜❂↝

That night as they all go to bed down, Steve only waits as long as it takes for the flap of their tent to close to get on Bucky’s case.

“What the fuck, Bucks?” he asks angrily, pushing Bucky down in the tent.

“What’s your problem, Captain?”

Watching Bucky’s smirk, cocky and ironic, riles Steve up even further. He loudly declares, “Come on, Sergeant, we’ll go walk the perimetre,” and grabs Bucky’s coat to hoist him up and out of the tent. All the while Bucky affects the most put-upon air, rolling his eyes and languidly letting himself be pushed out the tent into the camp and then further away.

They are about twenty metres from the campsite and surrounded by trees when Bucky starts humming something. Steve doesn’t even wait to find out what it is. The first note leaves Bucky’s throat and Steve rounds on him, still angry, but mostly upset.

“That was _our_ song,” he growls, “our song, why did you sing it like that?”

“Like what, Steve?” Bucky asks, reclining back against a tree trunk and reaching for a smoke.

Bucky doesn’t even have time to light up before Steve knocks the cigarette out of his hand. “Hey! Those are hard to come by, Steve.”

“Knock it off, Buck, I don’t like you acting.”

“ _You_ knock it off, you fucker.” Bucky bends down and retrieves the cigarette, now a little worse for wear. “It’s just a fucking song.”

“It’s not.” Steve’s throat chokes on the words. It’s not, it’s theirs, why is Bucky saying this shit. “It’s ours. Why are you doing this to me?” he manages to choke out.

Bucky lights the cigarette with great effort — it’s a bit humid from the patch of snow it fell into — and after taking a big breath in, blowing smoke up in the air, he says roughly, “you really want me to spell it out for you, huh?” Steve doesn’t answer. “Here we go, then.”

Bucky hums softly once, finding his key, and starts singing, not so loud that it could be heard far away, low enough for Steve to have to strain to listen, and step closer.

“You told me once, dear, you really loved me, and no one else dear, could come between. But now you've left me and love another; you have shattered all of my dreams.”

Bucky lets the last of the words die between them, falling like lead at Steve’s feet. Steve’s struggling to understand. Has… is Bucky…? “You found someone?” Steve asks softly, crushed, pulverised. He’s just powder, a pile of sand that’s going to fly off into the wind.

But instead of a cocky smile and an ironic answer, Bucky grits his teeth and snarls, so sudden in his own anger that Steve recoils. “Not me, you!” Bucky points at Steve with his cigarette, the cherry-red extremity greying out with the wind that picks up. “You left me, you fucking asshole. You can ask your fucking girl to sing for you, but don’t expect me to croon lullabies in your ear, you two-faced bastard.”

Wait… “Bucky.”

“No, I’m done.” Bucky takes a last drag of his smoke before crushing it on the tree trunk and shoving the fag end in his pocket.

Steve reaches out and grabs Bucky’s arm. “No, wait, Bucky, is this about Carter?”

If Steve’s grip hadn’t become so strong, maybe Bucky would have been able to shake him off. As it stands, Bucky only manages to turn towards Steve, grinding his teeth.

“Buck. There’s nothing between her and me.”

“Liar.”

“Nothing.”

Bucky grabs him by the collar. “I was there. I was right there.”

They are now so close that their noses could touch any moment, but the tension has ratcheted up so high it feels like a string, thrumming a high note. The air feels electric, sharp with more than just the bitterly cold wind. Steve’s irritation comes back full force.

“So I had the pleasure of watching you flirt around the whole neighbourhood, with the consolation that at least you’ll come back to me, but the day I flirt back with the first woman to spare a glance at me, show’s over?” Steve grips Bucky’s coat shakes him roughly — he shouldn’t, not with his strength, but Bucky is making him so fucking mad — “You’ve got some fucking balls, James fucking Barnes.”

Bucky clenches his jaw and for the briefest second Steve’s not sure if he is going to be decked or what, until Bucky shoves him — or at least tries to — and then grabs him back, reeling Steve back in to kiss him angrily, hungrily.

  
Art from Elkane and Alpaca

Ever since their first drunken kiss, Steve has learnt to be much quicker on the uptake. So when Bucky’s mouth immediately opens to devour him and he tries to bite Steve’s lower lip, Steve kisses back and grabs him by the back of his thighs to hoist him up, walking them back to the nearest tree until Bucky’s back hits it, perhaps more roughly than necessary.

Bucky grunts at the impact, but doesn’t break the kiss, giving back as good as he’s getting as Steve answers Bukcy’s angry desire with his own biting and licking. He’s missed this, he’s missed this so fucking much. He’s so, so mad, but he’s wanted Bucky so much for so long…

Steve feels Bucky’s arms snake up to his shoulders and then lace up behind his neck; that’s all Steve had needed to properly hold Bucky up against the tree, their bodies flush with each other. They are the only island of warmth in this cold forest, the only right thing in this unjust world.

The kiss turns messier and messier, spit and panting breaths, curses and swearing and “Don’t you dare put your cold hands down my pants, Rogers,” and it’s a simulacrum of fucking more than anything. Steve’s trying to catch his breath, but it isn’t easy when they are basically rutting against each other and trying to merge their bodies into one, clothes and the laws of physics be damned. Bucky’s groaning and moaning into Steve’s mouth, and it makes Steve go a little bit crazy with want.

Doesn’t matter who breaks the kiss first, they do it organically, stopping for a second just to catch their breath and look into each other’s eyes, clouded by leftover exasperation and pent-up desire. Bucky’s gasping for air, and Steve isn’t faring much better, spit drying cold on his chin while he gulps several breaths of bitterly cold air.

It feels like an interlude and it ends quickly; they had lost all patience ages ago, really. Bucky tilts his hips sharply against Steve’s, using the tree as leverage to grind against him, making Steve gasp out a curse. Both of their cocks are so fucking hard that no amount of winter clothing can hide their erections. Steve grunts at one well-aimed hip roll, his hands grasping Bucky’s thighs ever stronger.

“Bucky.”

“Shut up, Stevie.” He rolls his hips again and uses his hands on Steve’s neck to bring him close, “Kiss me, Jesus Christ, kiss me.”

Steve obliges — he has no intelligent thoughts left in his brain, anyway, what with all the blood that’s rushed south. Instead of going for filthily hot, though, he gently grazes his lips against Bucky’s and across Bucky’s cheek, and then goes to bite his left ear. He can feel Bucky’s cock, hard enough to pound concrete, right against his own, both enclosed in their tactical trousers, it feels like all the heat in the world has migrated right here to this spot, burning hot like a forest fire.

“The fuck—” Bucky’s still grinding, his movements getting more and more erratic as he seeks his pleasure. “Steve. Told you to, hng, ah!” Steve grinds back, pressing their dicks together, as close as possible in spite of their clothes. “Told you to kiss me.” It hurts a bit with how the cloth rasps against his cock, how constrained it feels, but Steve’s half out of his mind with lust and just wanting to get off, spill his frustration into his own pants.

“Bucky,” Steve murmurs, or moans, in Bucky’s ear. He smells like sweat and gun oil and unwashed hair, and all the good things in this god forsaken world rolled into one. “Buck, Bucky, you are my sunshine…” He groans as if in pain.

“Oh shit,” Bucky gasps, his arms clamping around Steve’s neck, tense. “Fuck, Steve.”

“- my only sun. Ha, -shine, oh god.” Steve can’t finish the verse, he’s gasping and grunting in Bucky’s ear, his breath hot and damp at the juncture of Bucky’s jaw. Bucky’s body goes tense in his arms, and Steve feels like lightning must have struck him. He leans back slightly, just to be able to see Bucky go off like a firework.

Bucky chokes back a moan, biting his lip, eyes closed in pleasure. What a fucking sight.

Steve can feel his hips working erratically with a mind of their own, and it’s like having an out-of-body experience, because his brain is just running through a loop of Bucky’s blissed-out expressions as his own body seeks its completion.

When it comes, he trembles and smothers his cry of pleasure in the collar of Bucky’s coat, biting down on the blue parachute silk in an effort not to make noise.

Steve quickly lets Bucky down, feeling wobbly. For a second, they keep leaning on the tree that’s the only thing holding them upright and just exist in each other’s space, heaving breaths, forehead against forehead, eyes closed.

“Ugh… Steve. This is gonna be a killer to wash and dry.”

“Hmhmm,” Steve smiles and goes to nuzzle Bucky’s cheek and ear. “Sing for me, please.”

There’s only silence for a beat, the sound of a forest asleep, the muffled faraway crackling of the campfire, Bucky’s inhale and exhale, so close to him — would he hear Bucky’s heartbeat if he strained his ears, with the serum?

“You'll always know dea—r, how much I love you, please don't take my sun-shine away…” Bucky purrs the words into Steve’s neck and lets his hands rove over Steve’s broad back. “I'll always love you— and make you hap-py—, I just need you to— say the same… And if you ta-ke me— as your lo-ver—,” Steve smiles, and can feel Bucky’s smile in answer, against his neck, “I’ll be besi-de you— , e-ve-ry day—…”

Steve nuzzles Bucky’s neck, a smile on his lips. “I swear Bucky. I swear I won’t take your sunshine away. Never will.”

* * *

Steve never does take Bucky’s sunshine away, turns out it’s Bucky who falls and then Steve, because how do you live on Earth where there’s no Sun?

* * *

For a long long time, everything is quiet.

No words.

No names.

No memories.

Just his screams and screams and screams.

↜❂↝

Bucky doesn’t break so much as he surrenders. One day, he’s screaming for Steve when one of his captors dumps a newspaper clipping on his lap. It’s about some sort of memorial, about Steve, whose body has been lost but they interred an empty casket somewhere in the US and Steve is dead.

Steve’s dead, right?

After that, he stops screaming, and the few memories he’d still clung to, he buries deep and forgets.

↜❂↝

The Winter Soldier is the best operative they have. His abilities are beyond those of the Widows, beyond anything the USSR could have hoped for. When they burn everything out of him, he’s an obedient soldier. When they leave him out of cryo-sleep for some time, he is a good spy and a ruthless killer. He often ends up back talking, that’s mostly why they wipe him and send him back to cryo, really.

He is also an excellent teacher. Didactic, factual, fair but with no qualms delivering punishment when the little spiders make mistakes. He trains soldiers and spies alike. He trains the failed attempts at recreating him, too.

He is feared outside of the USSR, and inside, too.

He hums.

He hums a sad song all the time, absent-mindedly, and part of his renown resides in this song. Some say that once you hear him humming, you have until the end of the chorus to say your prayers.

Then you die.

Operatives and spies working with him have often asked him to stop. It’s creepy. He never listens.

As for doctors, they have been asked at length to burn that fucking song out. It’s shameful to be only _nearly_ perfect, and it’s shameful for the Soldier to sing an American song.

The doctors tried, they really did. All of their efforts could be summed up by an endnote on a report, concise, to the point:

“Songs and music are stored in a different part of the brain than language and memories. However linked all those regions are, multiple attempts have shown that trying to increase the wipe strength in order to burn out the memory of the song might impact The Soldier’s ability to talk, signal, and process language. Thus, we advise against removing the song.”

And the Soldier hums on and on.

↜❂↝

Natalia is one of his favourite spiders. He doesn’t really know why, but she makes him feel a bit more human. It could be a weakness, but he thinks it’s a strength, for reasons unknown. Being human is a strength, he thinks, but he doesn’t seek out the hidden memories that would explain this.

She’s his favourite, but he stays impartial in his training. Training might be the difference between life and death, and mostly between a successful mission or a bust. So he has no compunction pushing her to her limits, just like the others.

Really, the only difference is in the aftermath of training. The spiders all mingle, but in a cautiously dangerous way. They socialise by sizing each other up. The Soldier smirks at that and bellows an order to go back to their rooms and get changed before he retreats to his own allotted room for a shower.

She disappears from his view quickly, before any of the other women. Girls. Kids. Young. Older. Fragile and not.

The Soldier sighs. He’s getting confused.

When he reaches his room, there she is, waiting for him. She looks serious, deadly, enticing, because that’s what they all are trained to be.

“Do you remember?”

The Soldier’s eyebrows jump. Remember what, exactly? “I never do,” he grunts and then looks at her suspiciously. “I think you know that.”

When he opens the door to his room, he gets no opportunity to bar the door before she slips in, like water through fingers. “But you remember me,” she counters, and then jumps on his bed and makes herself at home, the slip of a thing that she is. She tries to appear cocky and assured, and it makes his brain hurt.

“I think I’m better off not remembering, Natalia.”

He closes the door to his quarters behind him.

↜❂↝

He tends to sing in the shower, and for all that his memories are patchy at best, blank at worst, he knows he’s always sung, hummed, whistled, in one way or another.

It’s weird, because he doesn’t remember lyrics much; that’s why he mostly hums songs, he’s got the tune and the rhythm right, garbles some words here and there, but mostly it’s just gibberish.

Expect one song. This one he sings to himself only, never to anybody else. Sometimes he’ll whistle it during missions and get a kick out of the creeped-out looks or downright terrified gazes that it garners. Targets horrified, other operatives or even his officers looking at him, unsettled.

But the lyrics to that one, he keeps to himself.

When he gets out of the shower, he’s fully expecting Natalia to already be gone, but she’s still there, and she stares at him flatly, blankly.

“You remember.”

“No,” he says and towels his hair to avoid looking into her green laser eyes.

“You always sing this song.”

And she knows him and he never remembers anything.

The Soldier doesn’t answer.

↜❂↝

And…

He forgets.

He forgets Natalia and the spiderlings.

He forgets everything, he is a blank slate.

They wipe him more, he forgets more.

He forgets his name, he forgets the USSR and the glory of the communist state.

He forgets his handlers.

He forgets everything but the sunshine. His only sunshine… You make me happy… When sky are-

She’s seen the glint up the hill, she’s seen it and she knows she’s toast. She’s driving like a madwoman down the road, the anxious scientist in the backseat, gripping his briefcase full of classified documents smuggled out of Ukraine.

She knows him. He is immortal, he is empty, he always leaves, always forgets. She’s seen him countless times, she’s always gravitated towards him, because he was, and still is, danger.

Sometimes, she can hear him in her nightmares, humming softly.

She’s seen the glint up the hill in front of her, and she tries to swerve madly, unpredictably, so that he can’t get a stable target, but she knows…

Way back when, she used to dream that he would kill her, and she would be grateful for it.

Here in the present, she knows he’s going to kill her, she’s sure of it, she’s dead already, she’s sure of it. She knows because the pain when the armor-piercing round goes through the car door and her lower belly, to drill into the seat and then strike the scientist, she knows she’s toast. He’s toast, too. They’re dead already.

The car swerves one last time, out of its own volition. What a waste. Fuck trying to equilibrate the cosmic balance of all her crimes, karma caught up to her beforehand. Natasha spits blood and braces for impact. The car is going to tumble down a cliff and she can’t do anything but hope the scientist is still alive and that he put his seatbelt on.

Then hell breaks loose and up is down, down is up and back again. The windows smash into scintillating raindrops of sharp glass and she feels her breath cut off by her own seatbelt, and the hot pressure and incisive pain of the bullet that transpierced her.

When the car stops rolling over on itself, she allows herself a single second to catch her breath and ask herself why karma let her live. She’s upside down and a glance behind her shows that the scientist didn’t fucking make it.

She swears and unlatches her belt, falls on the car roof that’s now a floor.

If he didn’t go for the head, it must be because he’s going to check to make sure they die, she thinks as she scrabbles in the dirt, gasping through the pain. Or maybe it’s because he’s toying with his prey. Because…

_You are my sunshine…_

Natasha is dragging herself out of the capsized car, she’s nearly out, she just needs to get the papers at least, and then she can walk, or run, or die, but she can hear his song and it’s the most haunting thing. It always was.

The hum is coming closer, and she’s halfway out, holding the briefcase in her hands.

_… when skies are… gray…_

The Soldier, he’s here; she hears the whine and clack of his arm revving, the screech of a car door ripped open, a gun cocked, and a bang.

_Please don’t take my sunshine away…_

There are footsteps and the gun is cocked again. He sings under his breath, all out of rhythm, a soft crooning so at odds with—

Him.

She opens her eyes right there where she lays, and he’s above her, a tower of black tactical gear and brownish-red leather, goggles and a mask, softening his words even more. The rifle that punctured her belly is on his back, long, black, menacing, like him.

She looks at the monstrous mouth of the gun pointed at her and thinks that she was always supposed to die at the hand of the Soldier.

The song stops, he’s looking at her. She can feel the pebbles of the road under her, the wind on her skin.

“I’ll always love you…” Natasha starts, her voice raspy.

“… and make you happy…” he answers in kind.

As his footsteps retreat she can only hear the Winter Soldier whistling in the distance, tune carried by the breeze as she’s bleeding out on the road in the middle of nowhere.

She doesn’t dare move until she’s sure she can’t hear the whistling anymore.

* * *

Then one day he sees him, the man on the bridge, and he knew him, he knew him.

He knew him.

“Wipe him.”

He looks at his handler. He looks and he knows.

They took his sunshine away.

↜❂↝

Steve falls. It never ceases to be exhilarating to fall. He’ll never admit it to Natasha, but he likes the feeling of freefall. But right now, it doesn’t feel so good. He’s hurt, and all he can see is Bucky’s scared, haggard, face, his grey eyes, panicked, as Steve says that he’ll be with him till the end of the line.

He isn’t sure that he wants to survive the fall. He tried to live in a world without Bucky for three days, and it sucked so much that he tried to reenact the sinking of the Titanic with a plane. He’s tried for two years to live without Bucky, and it sucks so much that he’s lost all purpose.

But.

Maybe he needs to survive it though? For Bucky?

Freefall.

He inhales with a rasping breath as the sky catches fire above him and rains sharp pieces of broken metal and glass.

The water at this speed feels like concrete and knocks his breath away, makes his vision go grey and tunnel-like.

Before his consciousness fades, he hears another impact right beside him, something falling into the water, a dull sound that surrounds him. He closes his eyes thinking that he’s going to end up skewered on some piece of helicarrier.

↜❂↝

He comes to briefly on the bank of the Potomac river, to the gay whistle of a song he thinks he remembers.

He’s sure he…

↜❂↝

When he wakes up in the hospital, Sam says, “On your left,” and he’ll never tell him, never, ever, that he had hoped for a song instead of Sam’s smile, because Steve knows that until he can hear the song again, Sam’s smile is going to be all that holds him together.

Steve says, “Hey,” with a wobbly grin.

“You’re gonna be okay, Steve,” Sam says. But Steve isn’t really sure of that. Sam cocks his head. “I think, considering, that you’re okay to cry, too.”

And Steve cries quietly.

↜❂↝

Hunting for the Winter Soldier is terrible. It sucks. First, because the heartache isn’t going away, isn’t abating. The numbness Steve had draped himself in has been smashed into tiny little bits and pieces and has left him feeling like young skin after a burn, exposed, thin. Steve is an eggshell.

All the while he’s trying to find Bucky, Natasha is adamant that the Soldier will have left nothing of Bucky. She and Steve and Sam go on missions, they do recon, they destroy bases and basically try to do everything but nuke Hydra from orbit, and all along the way she tells him that “the Soldier forgets, he is made to forget.”

It means nothing to Steve. Till the end of the line or bust. Bucky is alive, so Steve will stay alive, and this is like World War Two all over again, chasing after Bucky to get their fucking song back and keep his fucking promise.

Because it was a promise, the line, the sunshine, the kisses urgent and hidden, those were all promises of forever that they never had the opportunity to keep.

Natasha looks him dead in the eyes while Sam is leaning on the wall in their safehouse, close to the latest Hydra base, the day before they go to blow it up.

“He might never be Bucky. I’ve known him a long time. He’s a gun and a song.” Steve smiles at that, because this is new, and this is good. “Steve,” Natasha warns; she’s seen this reckless smile too many times, generally before his blonde ass jumps out of an airplane without a parachute.

“Come on, let’s bed down for the day, we infiltrate the base at dusk.”

Steve leaves Sam and Natasha in the room to go take a nap.

And he hums low, low, low.

↜❂↝

The next day, they are combing through the Hydra base. It looks deserted, in the particular way that emergency evacuation looks. Hallways are empty but messy with furniture and papers strewn about, sometimes mountains of shredded paperwork, too, like a strange cloud hunched over on a wall.

Some parts of the base still had some personnel in them. He had warned them to stand down, but those that stay are always the ones who try to take a stand. Steve mows them down, because Nazis deserve nothing but a fucking bullet to the face.

This mission doesn’t look any different from any of the ones in the past months. Steve, Natasha and Sam meet back up at the pre-arranged point in a corridor on the second basement level. Steve takes point, and they advance cautiously but confident that they shouldn’t encounter much more resistance than before.

It’s the same as usual until it’s not.

First hint is the bullet casings — there’s a barrage of them in one of the hallways, and when Steve squints into the distance, he can see at the other end of the hallway a wall riddled with bullet holes and bodies heaped up, leaning against the wall, blood puddled everywhere around.

He checks back with Natasha and Sam. They continue, moving on, but with even more caution.

Papers shredded and burnt. Bodies, more bodies. Some of them in lab coats. Bullet holes and bloody footprints help them track down…

And then.

The whistling.

It’s haunting, bouncing around the deserted hallways. It echoes slightly, and they know they are nearing their target because the whistle is audible, just like the cry for help that gets cut off by a gunshot.

The whistling continues, lonely and eerie in the empty corridors of the Hydra base, then cuts to a low, raspy voice, rumbling a song…

Steve happens on Bucky first. He’s singing and has his gun pointed at a scientist, or a doctor, or just a fucking nazis disguised as one. He’s warbling the song lyrics gently, softly at the man who is panting for breath and visibly watching all of his wretched life flashing in front of his eyes.

“You'll never know hmm, hmm hm hmmm….” Bucky cocks his gun, Steve hears Sam and Natasha join him and they can only watch as the scene unfolds. “Please don't take my sunshine away…”

And the gun goes bang.

* * *

It’s an unavoidable staple of Steve’s day, and hence, everybody’s day at the Tower. For some reason — which Steve would understand if he tried — people at the Tower are creeped out by Bucky singing. It seems like, of all that Hydra tried to wipe out of Bucky, music is the single thing that always stuck. Sure, Natasha had told him so, but at the time, Steve had both latched on to it like a man starved for any sign of hope and was also of half a mind that it was impossible.

He’d lost Bucky, surely there was one last trick of fate, one last issue, a problem, a hurdle. A pebble in the shoe.

Turned out that… not so much.

Bucky sang and he whistled and he hummed. He also knew how to say a vast variety of words, but tended to singsong anything longer than three sentences. Opinions, likes, dislikes, all the forbidden stuff he wasn’t allowed to have: he sang.

Progressively, this habit was going away.

Slowly.

Other than that, Bucky is a pretty calm denizen of the Tower, all things considered. He spends most of his time sitting in front of the wide floor to ceiling windows of the common room, basking in sunlight and smiling, humming new songs. Sam has started making him listen to a wide variety of styles in a desperate attempt to stop him from always reverting to _that creepy song, oh my god, Steve, can’t you hear how creepy it is?_

It isn’t to Steve, it really isn’t. Isn’t it a household classic nowadays, anyway?

Bucky sunbathes and drinks protein shakes and gets used to solid food slowly, under the watchful eyes of Steve. He smiles wide when he finishes his — very small at the moment — plate, and Steve feels glad, happy. Bucky isn’t really fine, but neither is Steve. They are just… getting there.

Then in the afternoon, Steve reads a book, because he has taken a leave of absence from any kind of heroing. Bucky uses a tablet and reads wikipedia. He listens to music and gives one of his earbuds to Steve so that they can both listen to the same songs.

They snuggle on the couch, either in the common room or on their floor.

Because sometimes, Bucky will learn a new song, and he tends to use the lyrics to talk and ask questions and answer, and it makes him self-conscious, now. He’ll sing his questions and opinions to Steve and Steve will answer without singing most of the time, and it works for them.

At night they go to sleep together.

It’s just them, keeping all those promises, from way back when.

Nowadays, when Steve wakes up in the morning, it’s to a soft tune and soft words of happiness, Bucky crooning in his raspy voice a version of a song that’s just for them and, Steve smiles, ‘cause he is-

“- my sunshine, my only sunshine  
You make me happy when skies are gray  
You'll always know dear, how much I love you  
Please don't take my sunshine away

The other night dear, as I lay sleeping  
I dreamed I held you in my arms  
And when I awoke, dear, you were sleepin’  
And I kissed your head and smiled.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine  
You make me happy when skies are gray  
You'll always know dear, how much I love you  
Please don't take my sunshine away

I'll always love you and make you happy,  
I just need you to say the same.  
And if you take me as your lover,  
I’ll be beside you, every day.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine  
You make me happy when skies are gray  
You'll always know dear, how much I love you  
Please don't take my sunshine away

I told you once, dear, I loved you dearly  
And no one else could come between.  
And now you've told me we’re forever;  
You have mended all of my dreams.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine  
You make me happy when skies are gray  
You'll always know dear, how much I love you  
Please don't take my sunshine away.”

**Author's Note:**

> The modified lyrics are courtesy of me, lol.
> 
> Hope you liked all this ! Come find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/AlpacaKittens) or [Tumblr](https://profoundalpacakitten.tumblr.com/) to cry about Bucky calling Steve sunshine 💖😭.


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